Speaker 1: Zone Media. Hey everybody, Robert here, it's the Christmas two
Speaker 1: parter and every year we try to use our holiday
Speaker 1: episodes to do something good. This year, we're asking you
Speaker 1: to support the mutual aid project that James Stout over
Speaker 1: at It Could Happen Here, has been a part of
Speaker 1: for nearly six months in a remote part of the
Speaker 1: US Mexico border near Yacoomba, California. While you're hopefully warm
Speaker 1: and dry, the border patrol is detaining thousands of migrants,
Speaker 1: including children and the elderly, in the desert without food, water,
Speaker 1: or shelter when overnight temperatures drop below freezing. Volunteers provide
Speaker 1: hot meals, blankets and toys for children. They build shelters
Speaker 1: even though the Border patrol destroys them, and keep rebuilding
Speaker 1: them so that people have a place to sleep out
Speaker 1: in the freezing wind. Everyone there, including James, has spent
Speaker 1: a lot of their own money supporting this effort, and
Speaker 1: you can hear more about the efforts of volunteers over
Speaker 1: on It Could Happen Here. But your support would mean
Speaker 1: the world to James and the other people trying to
Speaker 1: help migrants over at the border, and of course those
Speaker 1: migrants themselves. You can donate to this effort at go fundme.
Speaker 1: If you just type Yakumba j A c U m
Speaker 1: b A Migrant Camps, go fund me, Yakumba Migrant Camps,
Speaker 1: go fund me, you'll get it. Or you can use
Speaker 1: the link TinyURL dot com slash border a GFM that'll
Speaker 1: take you right to the fundraiser. So thank you. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Behind the Bastards, Welcome Radio Voice Super Slam Edition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why are you doing this?
Speaker 1: Welcome back? What is the Holidays in the Morning podcast? Yeah?
Speaker 2: With Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: Morning Zoo with Robert Evans and Sophie Lichterman and Margaret Killjoy.
Speaker 1: We're the Opie and Anthony of not having one of
Speaker 1: our people clearly be a sex pest. Wow, what an introduction.
Speaker 3: I think you say you might have saved the best
Speaker 3: one for the end of the year. Great job, Robert.
Speaker 1: I went into it. I actually like op and I
Speaker 1: remember them from when I was like I can't write
Speaker 1: there were they were big, and I had been aware
Speaker 1: of a few of their sketches. I was never a
Speaker 1: regular listener, so I just you know, I was aware
Speaker 1: there were things. Was like, I wonder what happened to them.
Speaker 1: It feels like they should be a big thing in
Speaker 1: podcasts given where they were. I read up and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, that's what happened to them. Oh my
Speaker 1: As an end of the video treat job Robert, Yes,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. I wasn't surprised. It wasn't like one of
Speaker 1: those things that you hear and you're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: how could that have been? Going like, yeah, that completely scance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when are we surprised by when people who have
Speaker 3: too much power abuse that power?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, particularly men in media, men in comedy, right, yeah, where.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, very close, men in bands, it's it's
Speaker 3: roughly the same thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're yeah, we're when when one of them is
Speaker 1: not a sex pest. Yeah, I would love to see
Speaker 1: the statistic by occupation. Yes, anyway, we're back. We're continuing
Speaker 1: our series on Aaron Schwartz, one of the people who
Speaker 1: invented the Internet as we know it and where we
Speaker 1: are right now. Aaron's in his early twenties, you know,
Speaker 1: less than a decade into his career. He's been part
Speaker 1: of the creation of RSS, he's been part of the
Speaker 1: creation of the Open Library. He's one of the founders
Speaker 1: of Reddit, and he's helped to create the Creative Commons. Right,
Speaker 1: if that is what you can say about your life
Speaker 1: at the end of forty years of full time work,
Speaker 1: you have had a full career, right. Yeah, Aaron is
Speaker 1: like eight or nine less than a decade in right,
Speaker 1: Like just an astonishing CV you know if you want
Speaker 1: to think of it that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The next thing he's going to get on after he bounces,
Speaker 1: you know, from he goes to this thing he writes,
Speaker 1: helps write the Gorilla Open Access Manifesto. Aaron returns to Cambridge,
Speaker 1: mass and he gets involved with a new project, public
Speaker 1: dot Resource dot org, which want to increase access to
Speaker 1: public legal documents. Documents are collectively owned by all of
Speaker 1: us here in the old loss of status. You need us, right,
Speaker 1: we own them all. None of them are property of
Speaker 1: a court, of a lawyer or whatever. Right, if it's
Speaker 1: introduced to court, it's everybody's. That is the way this
Speaker 1: shit works, with very few exceptions. But that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you can just get access to it for free. Right Theoretically,
Speaker 1: if you like go to a legal library or something,
Speaker 1: you can get it. But like if you want to
Speaker 1: get it from the government. The government provides access to
Speaker 1: all this stuff that we all own via a system
Speaker 1: called PACER, And as a journalist having used PACER, I
Speaker 1: can tell you it sucks. Boiling dog shit. It is
Speaker 1: a fucking horrible program. It's really badly coded. It's very
Speaker 1: expensive to use if you're trying to get any meaningful
Speaker 1: amount of information. And this is a problem because this
Speaker 1: is access to stuff people need for their own legal cases.
Speaker 1: Lawyers need to defend their clients, Journalists need to report
Speaker 1: on things that involve the law. This is all critical
Speaker 1: part of engaging with the legal system. And it's paywalled
Speaker 1: effectively right and in fact, because of how expensive it is,
Speaker 1: the government was profiting at this point by about one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million a year, you know, off of
Speaker 1: the fees they cause. It's not insignificant. And you know,
Speaker 1: in addition to that, it's just a fucking nightmare to use.
Speaker 1: So the plan that this organization, Aaron doesn't found it,
Speaker 1: but he's like one of the first people on it.
Speaker 1: The plan that the Public Dot Resource dood org has
Speaker 1: is we want to get journalists, lawyers, researchers, people who
Speaker 1: are using PACER and getting access to documents to send
Speaker 1: them to us, which is perfectly legal. Right, You get
Speaker 1: a document from PACER, belongs to all of us, send
Speaker 1: it to us, and we will digitize it and put
Speaker 1: it online. Right, and over time, we can collect as
Speaker 1: much of this stuff as possible in a place that's
Speaker 1: free to use and well coded and searchable so that
Speaker 1: people can get better like, right, very good idea and
Speaker 1: again absolutely one hundred percent, no no legal problems with
Speaker 1: this plan, right.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it might piss people off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it might piss people off, right, because the government's
Speaker 1: got a big on this, But that doesn't mean you're
Speaker 1: doing doing anything wrong by having people do this right.
Speaker 1: Around this time, though, the government has launched a project
Speaker 1: to allow the idea was like, we want to increase
Speaker 1: access to PACER files for free, and so a handful
Speaker 1: of libraries basically had access to PACER without using money.
Speaker 1: So you could go to those libraries, access documents, print
Speaker 1: them out if you want it, right, or save them
Speaker 1: on a hard drive or whatever. Right, Aaron writes some
Speaker 1: code for this organization to allow him to automate this process.
Speaker 1: So in very short order he has downloaded twenty percent
Speaker 1: of the database of all American legal filings, right, a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. Again, not at all illegal. This is
Speaker 1: everybody's property. There's nothing that makes this at all. But
Speaker 1: the FBI gets on his ass, right because Pacer notices
Speaker 1: one guy is doing an awful lot of downloading what's
Speaker 1: going on? And the Fed starts serve. They send a
Speaker 1: federal agent to his house to stalk him to see
Speaker 1: if it's like his family's house. And he's eventually confronted
Speaker 1: by the FBI about the downloads, right, and they let
Speaker 1: him know like, yeah, we have been following you. There's
Speaker 1: a file on you. And again, Aaron has not done
Speaker 1: anything wrong, He has not done anything that there is
Speaker 1: any way this could be illegal, right, yea, what are
Speaker 1: you thinking about? How possibly could you be committing a
Speaker 1: crime by wanting to have more access to the law? Right?
Speaker 1: What is what is the potential? But the Feds be
Speaker 1: the Feds and they come after him, and you're like.
Speaker 3: The money, you know, it doesn't matter about law.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think they're also just like they don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on, and that's just you know, if
Speaker 1: you're the FBI, you handle every problem by sending a
Speaker 1: federal agent out after somebody, Right, Aaron doesn't get any
Speaker 1: trouble for this because he has again, he's done nothing wrong,
Speaker 1: but this makes him very paranoid, right, and it makes
Speaker 1: him very angry because this is his first interaction with
Speaker 1: how fucking scary the feds are right that, like, they
Speaker 1: were surveilling my home, they have a file on me
Speaker 1: because I wanted to increase access that people have to
Speaker 1: the law. I wanted to give people more access to
Speaker 1: the law. And the law came out like, yeah, this
Speaker 1: fucks him up somewhat, right, not hard to understand. Why
Speaker 1: now we.
Speaker 3: Give you took a bunch of pictures of national parks
Speaker 3: and we're like, here's a bunch of free pictures of
Speaker 3: national parks. And then the federal government was like, how
Speaker 3: dare you take? Why are you copies of the thing
Speaker 3: that we all own?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, So Aaron's on the government's radar now. And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the fact that he has not done anything wrong is
Speaker 1: not a defense to the Feds continuing to look at you. Right,
Speaker 1: And once you're on their radar, you tend to stay there.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to quote from Rolling Stone again. A
Speaker 1: year later, in September twenty ten, Schwartz connected a refurbished
Speaker 1: Acer laptop to MIT's terminal in Building sixteen, a modernist
Speaker 1: glass and concrete structure on the campus. Registered as a
Speaker 1: guest on the system he had used most of his life,
Speaker 1: he signed on to Jstore, an online library of academic
Speaker 1: journals that universities pay yearly subscription fees of up to
Speaker 1: tens of thousands to access. Using his script he had built.
Speaker 1: Not unlike the pacer Crawler, Schwartz began to download an
Speaker 1: extraordinary volume of articles. Over the course of the next
Speaker 1: three months, he found ways to circumvent attempts to block
Speaker 1: his connection, eventually hardwiring his laptop directly to the school
Speaker 1: servers from a restricted utility closet. By January of twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: he had downloaded nearly five million documents from Jaystore's database.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, now this is cool, and a reasonable person
Speaker 1: might say, what's the big deal, right, Aaron is allowed
Speaker 1: to access this stuff. He is a Harvard fellow at
Speaker 1: this point, and MIT gives them access to their stuff,
Speaker 1: So he is allowed to go to MIT, use their
Speaker 1: Jaystore access, download as many files as he wants. That
Speaker 1: is not a crime. It is a violation of policy
Speaker 1: that I think the school probably could have chosen to,
Speaker 1: like maybe press charge if they'd wanted to for going.
Speaker 1: But even then, it's kind of doesn't break in. It
Speaker 1: isn't like bust a lock. He just opens a closet
Speaker 1: he's not supposed to be in and leaves a laptop
Speaker 1: there hardwired in. It's we could a sketchy. I'm not
Speaker 1: surprised that the school took an interest in this, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's not. This is not kind of thing that
Speaker 1: they because they didn't. They didn't think we need to
Speaker 1: make sure that someone has free access. Doesn't download five
Speaker 1: million files right, right, and it is depending on what
Speaker 1: he had intended to do with those files, it could
Speaker 1: be illegal. A lot of those files are public resources,
Speaker 1: a copyright free. There's stuff that is old enough that
Speaker 1: there's no copyright, and a lot of those files are
Speaker 1: things he could have given out to whoever wanted. Not
Speaker 1: all of them, though a lot of them are not.
Speaker 1: If he had chosen to digitize all of that and
Speaker 1: put it up for free, that would have been illegal.
Speaker 1: Not saying it's wrong, I don't believe it is wrong,
Speaker 1: but that would have been a crime.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: But he doesn't do that. He doesn't ever get to
Speaker 1: that point, and we don't know that that's what he
Speaker 1: intended to do. This is a very important point. What
Speaker 1: happens is that MIT notices what's going on that this
Speaker 1: laptop has been put here, someone's in here, somebody's downloading
Speaker 1: all these files. They put a hidden camera in the closet.
Speaker 1: The camera captures Wore going in and changing out the
Speaker 1: hard drive once it fills up to put a new
Speaker 1: one in, and they contact law enforcement and he gets busted.
Speaker 1: Right there's a grand jury thing that's formed, and they,
Speaker 1: you know, the Feds present evidence as to kind of
Speaker 1: like what is is you know, he's been doing and
Speaker 1: he's going to end up getting indicted. And again we
Speaker 1: don't know why Aaron one of those files. For one thing.
Speaker 1: You know, if the Feds had really cared about if
Speaker 1: the concern was actual criminality, they would have waited to
Speaker 1: see if he was going to break the law. They
Speaker 1: did not. They come after him before that can ever happen.
Speaker 1: They are just trying to catch this kid because he's
Speaker 1: on their radar, right Yeah, and they don't give a
Speaker 1: shit if he's doing anything. And again, I don't morally
Speaker 1: think it would have been wrong if he stole those,
Speaker 1: but that is illegal, right, that is a crime. Right.
Speaker 3: But if they if they waited until he broke the law,
Speaker 3: then it would be the cat would be out of
Speaker 3: the bag and the files at all, yeahploaded. And so
Speaker 3: they wanted to stop him before he broke the law,
Speaker 3: which should be it would be morally it's morally ang
Speaker 3: the Feds to stop someone before they break the law
Speaker 3: out of a set And.
Speaker 1: Again, we don't know that he and I'll explain why
Speaker 1: we don't know that he would have done that. I
Speaker 1: think they didn't want to wait in case he wasn't
Speaker 1: going to break the law, right I do. That's kind
Speaker 1: of where I am. You know, I don't know, we're.
Speaker 3: Talking totally, because they could have just had them been
Speaker 3: like I want a database of this in case the
Speaker 3: laws change around it, or yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about there's a couple other things he
Speaker 1: could have been doing. What's important is that when he
Speaker 1: gets in trouble for this, he has not actually broken
Speaker 1: a law. Right, the Feds are going to argue he is.
Speaker 1: He has not actually yet done anything that is definitely
Speaker 1: criminal activity. And now there are some theories as to
Speaker 1: why he might have wanted these files. By this point,
Speaker 1: Aaron has again had another shift in his interests. He's
Speaker 1: less interested. Actually at this point, a lot of his
Speaker 1: rangers will say, he's not really that big into copyright stuff.
Speaker 1: At this point. He's moved on. He writes some stuff
Speaker 1: about this too, where he's like, that was you know,
Speaker 1: an earlier point to me, That's not my focus right now.
Speaker 1: He has gotten obsessed with having an impact in politics,
Speaker 1: using his knowledge of code and technology to further progressive politics. Right.
Speaker 1: That is what Aaron is into right now. One of
Speaker 1: the things he is doing is actually, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of it's kind of open source journalism. Right. He has
Speaker 1: just recently finished a massive project where he basically built
Speaker 1: a database of all of these publications of legal scholars,
Speaker 1: and he used the algorithms he was crafting to comb
Speaker 1: through them to find connections between legal scholars who have
Speaker 1: been hired as consultants by various corporations and are receiving
Speaker 1: money from those corporations, and then produce legal filings that
Speaker 1: become part of legal theory that benefits those corporations. This
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing you can only do when
Speaker 1: you have a massive data set and you're able to
Speaker 1: build connections between the data, right, And as a result
Speaker 1: of this, he is able to prove that legal theory
Speaker 1: is being crafted for pay by capitalists who are using
Speaker 1: legal scholars in a way that is very fucked up
Speaker 1: to push changes in the laws. Right, they are hiring
Speaker 1: as people. These people then independently published stuff that is
Speaker 1: helping these companies. Right, the kind of thing you have
Speaker 1: to have a huge data set to show, Right, that
Speaker 1: is something Aaron does. He proves this beyond a shadow
Speaker 1: of a fucking doubt. Not that that surprises anybody who
Speaker 1: listens to the show, but like, and that is a
Speaker 1: potential use of the files he was using that is
Speaker 1: in no way illegal.
Speaker 3: That makes so much sense. That's this is kind of
Speaker 3: mind blowing because I again, I only had the cliff
Speaker 3: Notes version of Aaron's life, and like, so I had
Speaker 3: the like and that you know, Dallo them to share
Speaker 3: him or whatever, and I liked him then, But this
Speaker 3: is like, yeah, yeah, it is a good point, and like, yeah.
Speaker 1: That would have been heroic and illegal, which again you
Speaker 1: and I I don't give a shit morally that it's illegal.
Speaker 1: I think that would have been a perfectly ethical thing
Speaker 1: to do. But there's a very good chance based on
Speaker 1: what he was doing, he had absolutely no intent to
Speaker 1: carry out. He was doing something else that's rad but
Speaker 1: that was in no way illegal.
Speaker 3: And he's also he's real smart, and he knows the
Speaker 3: Feds are on him, which does make it seem less
Speaker 3: likely that he was specifically planning on breaking the law,
Speaker 3: especially breaking a law that like because it took a
Speaker 3: long time, right, he was like going and replacing the
Speaker 3: hard drive and shit, right, and so he knew that
Speaker 3: the Feds were on him. So if he was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I got to do this and get them up and
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter if I go down because I did it,
Speaker 3: he would have done it a lot. He would have
Speaker 3: done that a lot faster maybe, I think Jack here.
Speaker 1: One of the things Quinn Norton will say also is
Speaker 1: that like, if he had been planning to do this
Speaker 1: big illegal thing, I knew a bunch of hackers, there
Speaker 1: were other ways to crack that data and get it
Speaker 1: that would not have involved him personally doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a thing he knew the people get to
Speaker 1: get involved with, right, there were there would have been
Speaker 1: a way if that had been his plan. I do
Speaker 1: think based on what I have read based on what
Speaker 1: he was doing at this point, I think it's likelier
Speaker 1: he had some sort of plan to analyze the data
Speaker 1: and use it for a project, as opposed to he
Speaker 1: wanted to post it up. Right again, I would have
Speaker 1: had no issue if he had of I just that's
Speaker 1: what seems most likely to me based on what he
Speaker 1: was doing. Right.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's fascinating.
Speaker 1: And as again as the New Yorker notes, this was
Speaker 1: part of a pattern in his career, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote from that again. Five or six years ago, at
Speaker 1: an Education in Democracy meetup, he asked if anyone was
Speaker 1: going to be in Washington, d C. And could pick
Speaker 1: up some files. He was compiling a report about the
Speaker 1: relation between candidate's wealth and their electoral success. And while
Speaker 1: successful candidate's financial disclosure records were available on the internet,
Speaker 1: unsuccessful candidate's records, while public, were not online. If you
Speaker 1: wanted to see them, you were supposed to make paper
Speaker 1: copies in a library. But he won a digital file
Speaker 1: so he could analyze the data. Alec Resnik was planning
Speaker 1: to be in DC and volunteered for the task. Resnick
Speaker 1: spent a couple of days in a library attempting to
Speaker 1: steal the files in digital form, got caught light about
Speaker 1: it and was held there for most of the night
Speaker 1: by police. He wasn't put out by the experience. The
Speaker 1: police had been very nice about it, he said. Schwartz
Speaker 1: found the story endearing in hilarious, and he and Resnick
Speaker 1: became close friends and so to the extent. Again, if
Speaker 1: that's what Aaron was doing, he probably thought, if I
Speaker 1: get caught, that's the worst case scenario, right, you know,
Speaker 1: they are a little sketched out. They take me to custody,
Speaker 1: and then they find out I didn't have I wasn't
Speaker 1: planning to do anything illegal with it, right. I have
Speaker 1: a right to this data and I have a right
Speaker 1: to do what I was doing with it. It was
Speaker 1: just kind of sketchy the way I went about it
Speaker 1: because I didn't want to ask, right, and that is
Speaker 1: you know, you can say the safer thing to do
Speaker 1: would have been to have approach to my tea and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to use your jstore to download fucking ten
Speaker 1: million files to do this big large data analysis. He
Speaker 1: had the right to do that. It probably would have worked.
Speaker 1: But you know Aaron, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: He's a break things person, and he's a he has
Speaker 3: a bit of that to him, right, Yeah, And he's
Speaker 3: also kind of he is enough of a child of
Speaker 3: privilege where he's not used to even probably with the
Speaker 3: Feds after him. Maybe I'm I don't know him, and I'm.
Speaker 1: I think sure, neither neither do I. That seems plausible
Speaker 1: based on what we do know about him, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So to do whatever work he had planned next, there's
Speaker 1: a very good chance he was looking at this as like,
Speaker 1: I need these massive data sets for some reason, and
Speaker 1: I want to do an analysis on it, right, And
Speaker 1: that is again within his rights. I think it's unlikely
Speaker 1: he thought what he was doing was illegal, or that
Speaker 1: if it was, it was the kind of thing might
Speaker 1: get like yelled at about a little slap on the wrist.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: He also doesn't think MIT is going to have an
Speaker 1: issue with this, because MIT is where a lot of
Speaker 1: hacker culture comes from. Right. The school has a history
Speaker 1: of like people are allowed to kind of push some
Speaker 1: boundaries because that's what makes MIT famous. Right, It's totally
Speaker 1: people who push boundaries. Right, So it's not all going
Speaker 1: to work out that way, And to talk about how
Speaker 1: before we talk about how it worked out, let's talk
Speaker 1: about some products that you can purchase using currency.
Speaker 2: Which is like points.
Speaker 1: It is like points.
Speaker 2: It is like point.
Speaker 3: The higher your point value, the more important you are.
Speaker 1: That's exactly how I feel gold.
Speaker 3: Points are worth more than paper.
Speaker 1: Yes, and we're back, so you know, uh uh yeah.
Speaker 1: Aaron probably did not think this was going to be
Speaker 1: an issue, certainly didn't think that if it was, the
Speaker 1: school was going to have a serious problem with what
Speaker 1: he'd done. But the response to what was at the
Speaker 1: most a minor indiscretion by Aaron in terms of not
Speaker 1: asking going into that closet was met with the legal
Speaker 1: equivalent of a nuclear and I'm going to quote from
Speaker 1: the New Yorker again here he was arrested after leaving
Speaker 1: the closet. The police took away his shoes and put
Speaker 1: him in a cell. Soon after his arrest, he returned
Speaker 1: the data he had taken, and Jaystore considered the matter settled. Mit, however,
Speaker 1: cooperated with the prosecution despite many efforts internal and external
Speaker 1: to dissuade it. The prosecutor, Stephen Heineyman, told Schwartz's lawyer,
Speaker 1: Elliott Peters, that if Schwartz pleaded guilty to all counts,
Speaker 1: he would spend six months in jail. If he lost
Speaker 1: at trial, it would be much worse. He said. The
Speaker 1: value of what was taken from Jaystore was two million dollars,
Speaker 1: and under the sentence and guidelines, that would equate to
Speaker 1: a sentence in the neighborhood of seven years. Peters says,
Speaker 1: and I said what he took from Jaystore wasn't worth anything.
Speaker 1: It was a bunch of like the nineteen forty two
Speaker 1: edition of Journal of Botany idea that Aaron should be
Speaker 1: sentenced the same way as someone who tries to beat
Speaker 1: someone out of two million dollars in a security fraud scam,
Speaker 1: someone who steals money from people, and you know that
Speaker 1: is a reasonable thing to be angry about and erin
Speaker 1: by the way gets he will claim. I have seen
Speaker 1: no reason to doubt this, that he is like physically
Speaker 1: abused by the police during his arrest during one of
Speaker 1: his arrests. That seems very likely. Know in the cops
Speaker 1: the situation Aaron now found himself in was deliberately bewildering
Speaker 1: and vague. You have to remember that, as Tim McVeigh said,
Speaker 1: the only language the federal government understands is force right,
Speaker 1: and when they charge you with a crime like this.
Speaker 1: Their tactic is shock in awe. The vast majority of
Speaker 1: federal prosecution succeed, So any intelligent defendant knows this. And
Speaker 1: when the federal prosecutors and whatnot say, hey, if you
Speaker 1: plead guilty, you get six months. If not, we're going
Speaker 1: to push for the maximum sentence, and it's this many
Speaker 1: fucking gonzo ass years. A lot of people. Most people
Speaker 1: take the plea, even innocent people, right, That's part of
Speaker 1: why their conviction is so a lot of innocent people
Speaker 1: plead guilty because it's like, well, they're offering me three months,
Speaker 1: six months, and that's better than the possibility of twenty years,
Speaker 1: even if.
Speaker 3: I yeah, no, I mean right, especially with something like this, Yeah,
Speaker 3: because you're in you're not putting anyone else at risk.
Speaker 3: If you plead out exactly like you're not like, you're
Speaker 3: not fucking over anyone else's cases.
Speaker 1: It ends with me. I can handle that much time, right.
Speaker 1: Aaron does not want to do this. For one thing,
Speaker 1: he's innocent. Hard to hard not to see why. He's
Speaker 1: also not a compromise guy. He hasn't had too much
Speaker 1: in his life, right, He doesn't feel like that his
Speaker 1: life has not providd not he lies thus far. One
Speaker 1: of the things his life thus far has not prepared
Speaker 1: him for is the kind of no win scenario that
Speaker 1: the federal government could trap you in. Right, Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: just he's not. That's just not a thing. Anything that
Speaker 1: he's dealt with has has given him sort of training in.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another issue is that the best plea deal he could
Speaker 1: possibly get, and there's some debate as to whether or
Speaker 1: not he was even likely to get much of a
Speaker 1: plea deal. That kind of goes back and forth with
Speaker 1: the best possible plea deal he could have gotten would
Speaker 1: have still left him with a felony record. And right,
Speaker 1: at this point, Aaron is like, I want to work
Speaker 1: in politics. I want to change the political system as
Speaker 1: an activist. I want to maybe work at the White House. Right,
Speaker 1: I have that potential, I have those connections. I could
Speaker 1: be in the White House helping to shape tech policy
Speaker 1: in a way that helps people. Can't work at the
Speaker 1: White House with a fucking felony. Right. That may be
Speaker 1: changing soon, right, but at this point in time, that's
Speaker 1: how he sees. This is what he says to Quinn Norton. Right,
Speaker 1: I can't work at the White House with I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't take this plea deal because it'll lock me
Speaker 1: out of this thing that I want. And again it's
Speaker 1: part of like Aaron is not a compromiser. He can't
Speaker 1: compromise this current dream of his. Yeah, right, even though
Speaker 1: maybe that's the thing that guarantees he suffers the least, right,
Speaker 1: and that would end this horrible legal process, you know. Now,
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that today I see this on Twitter
Speaker 1: every time stuff about Aaron Schwartz comes up, Right, every
Speaker 1: time the anniversary of his death comes around, all that
Speaker 1: stuff that j Store hounded him in prosecution to his death.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's accurate. I'm not saying they don't
Speaker 1: deserve some blame. I don't even like Jstore, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's a lot that's bad about that. But they are
Speaker 1: as soon as he gives the files back, they're like,
Speaker 1: we consider this done. We have no desire to prosecute him, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they do not push to prosecute him. Right, This is
Speaker 1: a decision. MIT is a part of this. MIT is
Speaker 1: part of his why he can he suffers from this,
Speaker 1: And largely it's federal prosecutors, right, even local prosecutors who
Speaker 1: have the option of charging him with some stuff, are
Speaker 1: uninterested in pursuing the matter, in part because I think
Speaker 1: they're like, well, this is mit, right, this is like
Speaker 1: what we do here tech, Like this kid hasn't done
Speaker 1: anything really that bad. If we wanted to, we could
Speaker 1: fuck him over, but like that doesn't help us as
Speaker 1: fucking you know Cambridge, Massachusetts, Right, Yeah, Like we don't
Speaker 1: benefit from hurting this guy who's a tech genius. That
Speaker 1: doesn't you know. I'm not saying they're altruists here, but
Speaker 1: it is the FEDS who decide this needs to move, right,
Speaker 1: They and that, as far as I can tell, that
Speaker 1: is the primary blame in terms of why this keeps
Speaker 1: being a fucking thing.
Speaker 3: I know why that motivation? Is it because he's a progressive?
Speaker 3: Is it like we're going to talk about that, Oh okay, cool.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm not going to say none of I'm not
Speaker 1: going to say there aren't multiple things that factor into it,
Speaker 1: But I think the actual reason is so much sadder
Speaker 1: and more banal, As is often the case with terror
Speaker 1: evil right, we talk about you know, this is a case.
Speaker 1: We talk about Joseph Mangela, right, who his reputation in
Speaker 1: pop cultures. He was just this insane, mad scientist carrying
Speaker 1: out these nightmare experiments because of his sick mind.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: The reality is there were a lot of errant scientific beliefs.
Speaker 1: Scientists and doctors who are highly placed in the medical
Speaker 1: establishment at the time needed access to human test subjects
Speaker 1: that they couldn't get through willing test subjects. He had
Speaker 1: access to human beings, and he wanted to help his career.
Speaker 1: He wanted to set himself up for a scientific career, right,
Speaker 1: so he did that, right, That's why Mangela did what
Speaker 1: he did. He wasn't just like some sadist who was
Speaker 1: getting off on it. Right, There's really not the evidence
Speaker 1: for that he was he was doing. He didn't. He
Speaker 1: was just the kind of person who didn't care what
Speaker 1: he had to do to further his career and to
Speaker 1: build a career for That's what's behind this, okay, Right,
Speaker 1: as far as.
Speaker 3: Someone wants to land a big fish case, that is yep,
Speaker 3: yep cool.
Speaker 1: A lot of what's happening here. The federal government is
Speaker 1: at this point in the middle of its second great
Speaker 1: crackdown on so called hackers. Right. Some of this is
Speaker 1: because Anonymous, the digital activist collective online has spooked the
Speaker 1: olds at this point. Right, Yeah, there there's a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, it's a sexy thing that like, you
Speaker 1: can scare people on Fox News about, right, these these
Speaker 1: hacker gangs and shit, and a prosecutor can make a
Speaker 1: name for themselves by going after cybercrime.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Stephen Hayman is the prosecutor here, and he takes the
Speaker 1: case to a grand jury who indicts Aaron on four
Speaker 1: felony accounts, including wire fraud and computer fraud. Nine more
Speaker 1: felony accounts are added later. Aaron could have faced thirty
Speaker 1: years in prison, you know, or more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I.
Speaker 1: Think up to fifty is possible, but like very good chance,
Speaker 1: like at least like ten years and probably you know,
Speaker 1: the serious potential for more had he been convicted.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Much of the prosecution's arguments had to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that Aaron had shielded his face with a bike
Speaker 1: helmet when he walked past a security camera. Right. Carmen Ortiz,
Speaker 1: the US Attorney for Massachusetts and Obama appointee, compared to
Speaker 1: what Aaron had done to robbery, saying, stealing is stealing,
Speaker 1: whether he hu's a computer command or a crowbar. Now
Speaker 1: it's not. That's fucking nonsense. Because if you use a
Speaker 1: crowbar to break into a store and steal shit, right,
Speaker 1: have whatever opinions about the ethics of that, but you
Speaker 1: have damaged something. You've damaged the store front. Yeah, taken assets.
Speaker 1: People have to replace those assets. There is there is
Speaker 1: a harm to that business. Right, I'm not making a
Speaker 1: moral judgment about this, but there's a harm. If you
Speaker 1: download files from Jay's store and you have them on
Speaker 1: your hard drive and you have legal access to those
Speaker 1: files for free. You haven't heard j store. They're not
Speaker 1: out anything, right, and like they still have the He
Speaker 1: didn't delete them, he didn't hack in and delete them from.
Speaker 3: Their servers, you know, Like stealing is when you take
Speaker 3: something from someone and then they no longer have it.
Speaker 3: That is that, Yes, that is how I define stealing
Speaker 3: is when you take something and then the other person
Speaker 3: no longer has Illegal copying can be a crime, and
Speaker 3: it can and you can material. You can monetarily damage
Speaker 3: someone if you if you hiate someone else's shit and
Speaker 3: then you start selling it, you might make money instead
Speaker 3: of the other person or.
Speaker 1: Y right there, or if you know, if they have
Speaker 1: people have access to it for free and you don't
Speaker 1: get paid. You can argue there's a harm there. Now
Speaker 1: I don't think that's how it actually works.
Speaker 3: I think, but you're not taking the files from someone.
Speaker 1: Exactly, he is not. It is not like using a crowbar,
Speaker 1: because you use a crowbar to break things, and he
Speaker 1: has not broken anything. Right, he did not hack his
Speaker 1: way into the system, right, he had access to it.
Speaker 1: You know, the fact that this logic is nonsense and
Speaker 1: the fact that Aaron, again there's no proof he had
Speaker 1: intended to contravene the law in any way. You know,
Speaker 1: that's what I would say, what you would say, But
Speaker 1: you know what matters is what the Feds are trying
Speaker 1: to say. And this, unfortunately, is where Quinn Norton comes
Speaker 1: into the story again. Okay, now again. Quinn is a
Speaker 1: journalist who's beat at this point. Heavily focuses on the
Speaker 1: hacker community and that corner of digital culture. She and
Speaker 1: Aaron had an on again, off again relationship for years,
Speaker 1: and she was a major part of his emotional support
Speaker 1: system after he got arrested and charged. Her close relationship
Speaker 1: with him and her history writing about hackers makes her
Speaker 1: a target for the Feds and one of the things
Speaker 1: I don't really understand about her is she's working with
Speaker 1: these people who are very much in danger, right, and
Speaker 1: who are very much breaking the law. Right. Some of
Speaker 1: the people she reports on are not people who stay
Speaker 1: within the lines the way Aaron had his whole life.
Speaker 1: Not making a judgment, that's just the truth. She has
Speaker 1: dog shit op sect. She will admit that. By the way,
Speaker 1: her op sect's not one thing. She takes as a habit,
Speaker 1: notes on basically every conversation she ever has and stores
Speaker 1: them on her computer, along with interviews and stuff with sources,
Speaker 1: which is not a good idea, right, really dangerous. So
Speaker 1: when this happens the FEDS start looking into her, and
Speaker 1: Quinn realizes this is happening, is like, if they get
Speaker 1: my laptop, not only am I potentially in some danger
Speaker 1: because I don't know, maybe she had been into some
Speaker 1: shit or it doesn't even matter if she had, right
Speaker 1: because the Feds are going after Aaron and he hasn't
Speaker 1: broke in law. But also all of her sources are
Speaker 1: in danger if they get this laptop. That's a bad
Speaker 1: situation to be in, a very scary situation to be in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as a journalist, and I have some sympathy for that.
Speaker 1: She's also a single mother. And man, if you know
Speaker 1: anything about the FEDS and they love single moms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nothing against that, but that's a weak point because they
Speaker 1: can come after you and say, you know, they don't
Speaker 1: even have to say it. They know if you're looking
Speaker 1: into them, well that you lose your kid, you could
Speaker 1: be away for years, you can miss their whole life, right,
Speaker 1: and that if you're single parent, single dad too, you're like,
Speaker 1: it is a thing. It's the same way like the
Speaker 1: FEDS go after addicts. Right, It's an easy way to
Speaker 1: get some charges on someone in an easy way to
Speaker 1: try to roll some right, it's just the way they work.
Speaker 1: I'm absolutely not making moral judgment here. It's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why the system is so scary, right, because
Speaker 1: these are not vulnerabilities that mean you're not a bad
Speaker 1: person for being vulnerable to this. It's understandable that you'd
Speaker 1: be vulnerable. You have a person to take care of,
Speaker 1: you know, right.
Speaker 3: But fortunately she put her laptop hard drive into a
Speaker 3: microwave and they didn't.
Speaker 1: Get Unfortunately, that is not where this goes. So the
Speaker 1: Secret Service, and for a variety of complicated reasons, they
Speaker 1: have a lot to do with nine to eleven. They
Speaker 1: are the FEDS who wind up investigating this, right.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's it's because of computer fraud.
Speaker 1: Shit, you know, it's just it's a it's a thing,
Speaker 1: right sure, in part because wire fraud and stuff like.
Speaker 1: There's that anyway, it's the secret service that is that
Speaker 1: is that are the FEDS coming out in this particular case,
Speaker 1: they show up at her door. She invites them into talk.
Speaker 1: Never ever do this, yea Quinn herself. She has written
Speaker 1: an article in the New Yorker and was like, this
Speaker 1: was a horrible mistake that I made. You should never
Speaker 1: ever do this terrible mistake. The logic she's acting under,
Speaker 1: I'm not defending this because this was a horrible decision.
Speaker 1: The logic that she says she was acting under is
Speaker 1: I haven't committed a crime. If I can explain that
Speaker 1: to them, maybe they'll go away right now. The kind
Speaker 1: of FEDS who do this job, who go door to
Speaker 1: door to people, have an understanding of how to be
Speaker 1: an interviewer. A major strategy anyone who does that job
Speaker 1: will tell you is to leave yourself. This is the
Speaker 1: true for journalists too. What matters most is keeping your
Speaker 1: subject talking, right, you do whatever you can to keep
Speaker 1: them talking, because the more you get from them that
Speaker 1: the higher the chance they're going to say something. You
Speaker 1: can take advantage of it. They might admit to a crime.
Speaker 1: They also, if you're a federal aation, they can lie
Speaker 1: to you, right, And it doesn't matter if it's you're
Speaker 1: lying about something that's not illegal. Lying to a federal
Speaker 1: ation's a fucking crime. If it's if they're interviewing you about,
Speaker 1: you know, a case. Right, you can get people on that,
Speaker 1: and then you have a thing to hold over their head.
Speaker 1: You have a thing you can get them to roll on.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So she talks to these guys, right, bad thing to do,
Speaker 1: bad idea, don't don't do this. The conversasion ends with
Speaker 1: them saying, you have been subpoenaed and commanded to go
Speaker 1: to a grand jury. She lawyers up. She doesn't have
Speaker 1: a she's very not rich, does not have much money,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately one of the lawyers she get, one of
Speaker 1: them is a firm former prosecutor. They are not good
Speaker 1: lawyers to have in this situation. They urge her to
Speaker 1: comply with all of the requests the Feds make. Right,
Speaker 1: most lawyers will so I know too much? Ye, grand
Speaker 1: jury's most lawyers will push you to yes. Yes, this
Speaker 1: is not uncommon. The situation she is in is not
Speaker 1: an uncommon one. I'm not saying that to defend the
Speaker 1: choices she makes. This is just not a weird situation.
Speaker 1: The end result of all this is what is called
Speaker 1: a profit letter. Right. This is where the prosecutor says,
Speaker 1: we will give you immunity. It's usually like we'll give
Speaker 1: you immunity for a day. Basically we'll give you know,
Speaker 1: potentially we can extend this. You can have this conversation
Speaker 1: where basically nothing can hurt you, and if we find
Speaker 1: out you have information we want, then we won't keep
Speaker 1: fucking with you. That's more or less the offer, right.
Speaker 1: Quinn says, she talks this through to some extent with Aaron.
Speaker 1: It's unclear to me exactly how much he knows about
Speaker 1: what she's doing. At this point in time. She decides
Speaker 1: to do this, and again, her logic is, I am
Speaker 1: not aware that Aaron has broken the lawn anyway, and
Speaker 1: I have not broken the line anyway. What could this
Speaker 1: hurt if I answer their questions and they know I
Speaker 1: don't know anything, and all this ends.
Speaker 3: And this is also one of the only circumstances where
Speaker 3: if she had remained silent, she there are many systems
Speaker 3: by which she could go to jail without having committed
Speaker 3: a crime.
Speaker 2: In civil contemptuary. Yes, so like it.
Speaker 3: She is risking something if she decides to talk, which.
Speaker 1: Is is a fucking scary situation. Yeah, her, no way
Speaker 1: around that.
Speaker 3: Every other country with Grand Juri's I think I think
Speaker 3: all of them abolished it. It comes from old British law,
Speaker 3: and everyone else is like, oh, this is a clear
Speaker 3: this clearly leads to abuse of power.
Speaker 2: Let's get rid of it.
Speaker 3: In the US was like, nah, we not get this
Speaker 3: is that's why we like it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so she does this, has this conversation. It's going
Speaker 1: to turn out to be another bad decision. And again
Speaker 1: she's in the position a lot of people are in
Speaker 1: this where you give them because you haven't done anything
Speaker 1: and you don't think your friend has, you give them
Speaker 1: a lot of information, and unfortunately she says exactly the
Speaker 1: wrong thing, which is she mentions at one point the
Speaker 1: existence of the Gorilla Open Access Manifesto and that Aaron
Speaker 1: had been one of the people who worked on it. Ah,
Speaker 1: that includes lines saying what people should do is gain
Speaker 1: access to Paywalt stuff that they have legal access to
Speaker 1: and put it up online for free.
Speaker 3: And so now you have a conspiracy case exactly because
Speaker 3: conspiracy cases don't involve anyone conspiracy rules.
Speaker 1: It's terrible.
Speaker 3: You don't have to break the law, like saying I
Speaker 3: am interested in the following crime is not illegal, and
Speaker 3: then doing something that's legal that is in furtherance of
Speaker 3: that crime is also not illegal unless you put the
Speaker 3: two together and then it's conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Yep. So that is the situation, right, And the FEDS,
Speaker 1: who I think are at this point, the Feds aren't dumb, right,
Speaker 1: That's one of the things you have to understand about
Speaker 1: these people. Not dumb, often lazy, And it's lazy that
Speaker 1: they didn't know about this, right because it's a secret, right,
Speaker 1: not hard to find out that Aaron had been one
Speaker 1: of the people who worked on this thing. They just
Speaker 1: you know, especially at that point, there's a lot less
Speaker 1: people who are FEDS who know the internet, you know,
Speaker 1: so they're not good at finding this stuff. Right. Once
Speaker 1: she mentions that this thing that is public knowledge, right,
Speaker 1: they're like, bam, we got a case, right, This is
Speaker 1: this is this is evidence that we can argue in court.
Speaker 1: Is intent. He has intent to distribute right, so intent
Speaker 1: to commit a crime. Right Again, the reality, as far
Speaker 1: as we can tell, Aaron seems to have moved on
Speaker 1: from that as a central issue in his life. He's
Speaker 1: kind of flighty about this stuff. You know, we don't
Speaker 1: fully will never fully know what he intended to do
Speaker 1: with it. But the reality didn't matter. The Fed's had
Speaker 1: the argument the AMMO. They needed to make a case,
Speaker 1: and that's what they're going to do.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Her involvement in all of this is among the most
Speaker 1: controversial parts of it. Many who were close to Aarin
Speaker 1: will say that she snitched on him. Certainly not and
Speaker 1: I see why people say that not an unjust interpretation.
Speaker 1: For his part, Aaron is furious. He also doesn't stop
Speaker 1: being close with her.
Speaker 3: Curious that people are calling her a snitch or furious
Speaker 3: at her no, furious at her right for what he's done.
Speaker 3: He also seems to have forgiven her at some point.
Speaker 3: I don't know the guy.
Speaker 1: That's what people who know them will say. They continue
Speaker 1: to be close. I think for the remainder of his life.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not going to say anymore about that
Speaker 1: or make a more kind of judgmental stance there. Obviously
Speaker 1: a number of people close to them both have That's
Speaker 1: totally fair. It's just, you know, I'm trying to just
Speaker 1: present the facts of what happened in as much as
Speaker 1: I can. So that's the situation here, and again they
Speaker 1: are going to remain you know, close for the remainder
Speaker 1: of Aaron's life, which is not going to be a
Speaker 1: long time, but it is going to include one fairly
Speaker 1: substantial achievement and we are going to talk about that
Speaker 1: when we come back after some ants and we're back,
Speaker 1: so Margaret, one more good thing to talk about. On
Speaker 1: October twenty sixth, twenty eleven, Representative Lamar Smith, a Republican
Speaker 1: from Texas, introduced the Stop Online Piracy Act into Congress.
Speaker 1: This act, written at the behest of Hollywood studios, would
Speaker 1: have basically given the government freedom to block access to
Speaker 1: websites that included any copyrighted material. It was draconian in
Speaker 1: scope and enforcement, and would have essentially killed the Internet
Speaker 1: as we know it. The bill was widely supported by
Speaker 1: all of the people with money, and it was initially
Speaker 1: expected to pass without comment. Right, Yeah, this was supposed
Speaker 1: to happen and not be a big fight, right Aaron Schwartz,
Speaker 1: who by this point is fighting in secret. Most of
Speaker 1: the people who know him do not know that he
Speaker 1: is being charged, right, do not know that this is ongoing?
Speaker 1: Oh shit, he is keep a lot of that secret
Speaker 1: for a while, right.
Speaker 3: Which is a makes some sense if you're if you're
Speaker 3: facing kind of any kind of conspiracy shit, you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: like not yes, not bringing other people into risk, and
Speaker 3: you don't want to talk about your case.
Speaker 1: And he's trying to do He's trying to affect political change.
Speaker 1: He's dealing with serious people in Paulay. He doesn't want
Speaker 1: him to know that he's dealing with this.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: So shortly after SOPA gets introduced, he has a meeting
Speaker 1: with Senator Lahy with his office, not with the Senator himself,
Speaker 1: and a guy at Senator lazy Lay's office named Aaron Cooper.
Speaker 1: Cooper is today a contributor to the Federalist Society. I
Speaker 1: don't like him. He's served at this point as chief
Speaker 1: counsel for intellectual Property and any trust law to Lahy,
Speaker 1: and Cooper listens to Aaron's arguments for why SOPA was
Speaker 1: a bad idea. Aaron's free friend Peter Eckersley later claimed
Speaker 1: quote Aaron Cooper replied, oh yes, but what you don't
Speaker 1: understand is that copyright and copyright enforcement is more important
Speaker 1: than the Internet. Sure you've got this Internet thing, but
Speaker 1: actually this thing is more important, and it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if things break or need to be reorganized. The priority
Speaker 1: of this country is going to be making sure that
Speaker 1: files cannot be shared, songs cannot be copied, movies cannot
Speaker 1: be copied, and will break things. If that's the easiest
Speaker 1: way to do it, we're going to have to do
Speaker 1: it right. This makes Aaron angry. Yeah, not hard to
Speaker 1: see why. So he founds an organization with his friend
Speaker 1: David Siegel called Demand Progress. Right today, Demand Progress is
Speaker 1: still in existence. It is a five oh one C
Speaker 1: four that supports internet freedom, civil liberties, all that good stuff.
Speaker 1: They oppose, attempts to crack down on whistleblowers and the like,
Speaker 1: and their first big fight is stopping sofa. Now a
Speaker 1: lot of people are involved in this battle. I don't
Speaker 1: want to do a thing that sometimes gets done and
Speaker 1: make it out like Aaron is the loan hero who
Speaker 1: holds back the tide. Of corporate bloodsuckers trying to kill
Speaker 1: the Internet. But he does play a very massive role
Speaker 1: in the fight against SOFA. He is one of the
Speaker 1: people who organizes the response to this attempt to pass
Speaker 1: this law. And part of why he is so important
Speaker 1: is that he understands before most people how to use
Speaker 1: the Internet and harness the power of a crowd to
Speaker 1: turn it against the enemy, right, to stop bad things
Speaker 1: from happening, and to do this in a way that
Speaker 1: matters more than just making people angry on social media. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he he is successful ultimately in this demand progress is
Speaker 1: still around, still influential. One of the things that you know,
Speaker 1: can claim to be one of Aaron's many gifts to
Speaker 1: the world, and SOPA is stopped, right, Aaron plays a
Speaker 1: major role in stopping this. Yeah, you know, that is
Speaker 1: kind of the last big thing that he accomplished.
Speaker 3: I remember, yeah, I remember when sopos. I mean it
Speaker 3: felt like for a while, it was like every couple
Speaker 3: of years they were like, here's this new thing that
Speaker 3: will completely because they wanted so desperately to trash the
Speaker 3: open Internet.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And eventually it did get trash, but not that way.
Speaker 2: I know, I did it in the insiduous y.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but that's a story for another day for
Speaker 1: rail bastards. Yeah. Kind of the capstone of Aaron's career
Speaker 1: in public life. And unfortunately, you know, his success in
Speaker 1: every other field of endeavor did not protect him ultimately
Speaker 1: from the long arm of the law. The prosecution against
Speaker 1: him rolled forward, inevitable as the tide and cruel as
Speaker 1: a hurricane wind. This gets Haman a lot of press attention.
Speaker 1: It's sexy because going after hackers as sexy. The whole
Speaker 1: reason why he's on board to go after Erin is
Speaker 1: because he's politically ambitious and he wants you to campaign
Speaker 1: on bringing down these scary young hacker kids who scare
Speaker 1: old people. I'm going to quote from a write up
Speaker 1: and see that here. Alex Stamos, who the defense had
Speaker 1: planned to call as an expert witness on computer intrusion,
Speaker 1: said I know a criminal hack when I see it,
Speaker 1: and Aaron's downloading of journal articles from an unlocked closet
Speaker 1: is not an offense worth thirty five years in jail.
Speaker 1: Law professor Tim Wu added the Ortez's legal authority to
Speaker 1: take down Schwartz was shaky after a federal appeals court
Speaker 1: ruling last year. There is then a very good chance
Speaker 1: that had the case gone to court, Aaron would have
Speaker 1: been found innocent. And when he does make public what
Speaker 1: he's doing, a lot of people rally around him. They
Speaker 1: start trying to support him, help him go through this.
Speaker 1: Aaron kind of hates this because again he hates asking
Speaker 1: people for help. He hates hates being dependent, he hates
Speaker 1: people keep talking about him. Right, this is miserable for him.
Speaker 1: It fucks with a lot of stuff that's just he's
Speaker 1: you know, he's always kind of struggled with and it
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's pretty close to a guarantee
Speaker 1: that he would have been found innocent, or if he
Speaker 1: had been convicted, it would have been overturned before too
Speaker 1: terribly long. Right, Not that that's not a lot to
Speaker 1: deal with, but this is he just can't handle this, right.
Speaker 1: Not only is the dealing with this incredibly stressful, his
Speaker 1: money is all gone, it's been eaten up by the
Speaker 1: legal fees, right, which is more stress, more dependency. And
Speaker 1: he has recurrent health issues, right and kind of after
Speaker 1: he wakes up feeling bad one morning, can't get out
Speaker 1: of bed. You know, his girlfriend at the time, can't
Speaker 1: get him to get up, you know, she leaves for
Speaker 1: the day to do her stuff, and while she's gone,
Speaker 1: he hangs himself. On January eleventh, twenty thirteen. It's it's
Speaker 1: you know again. As is always the case with suicide,
Speaker 1: the only thing going on here is not the prosecution,
Speaker 1: is his ongoing depression, which is influenced and brought on
Speaker 1: by his His physical mains is a part of this.
Speaker 1: It's part of his mindset. It affects him. The stuff,
Speaker 1: some of the stuff going on in his head and
Speaker 1: how it relates to all this affects this. But fundamentally,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone who knows him denies that the
Speaker 1: prosecution against him was ultimately why he takes his own life.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, that's that's why this happens, you know. And
Speaker 1: that's that's you know, just like I don't think stealing
Speaker 1: shit from Jaystore to put up online would have been
Speaker 1: a moral in my book. That's murder in my book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's at least the equivalent of drunk driving, right, the
Speaker 1: legal equivalent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, man, Yeah, manslaughter maybe, yeah, and it it's
Speaker 3: the we don't care, it's reckless and dangerment.
Speaker 2: But actually killing him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like it's it's drunkenly killing someone with your car.
Speaker 1: If you were trying to build a career as like
Speaker 1: the best drunk driver in the country, right, that was
Speaker 1: your life goal. Yeah, like that's kind of what's going on. Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, weird to compare it to that, but
Speaker 1: we need some levity, I guess now. As a side note,
Speaker 1: here a couple of side notes. On January ninth, two
Speaker 1: days before he took his own life, Jay Store made
Speaker 1: its archives of more than twelve hundred journals free to
Speaker 1: the public, in part due to the backlash when people
Speaker 1: found out why Aaron was in trouble. Recently last earlier
Speaker 1: this year, the Biden administration made some changes to massively
Speaker 1: increase access to a lot of scientific papers and whatnot
Speaker 1: that were publicly funded. A lot of that has to
Speaker 1: do with activism that has occurred by Aaron's friends and
Speaker 1: the result of his death. You know, there have been
Speaker 1: a number of there's also a website that exists right
Speaker 1: now if you want to get access to studies, academic papers,
Speaker 1: chapters from textbooks, in a lot of cases, any kind
Speaker 1: of not just science, but like a lot of history,
Speaker 1: and stuff publications, a lot of politics that are paywalled
Speaker 1: that you don't normally have access to find either what's
Speaker 1: called the Deal Why, which is the number that lists
Speaker 1: those kind of publications, or just the link to the
Speaker 1: paywall publication and type sy hub into Google and go
Speaker 1: to a website called sy hub, and it more often
Speaker 1: than not will return you a free version of that
Speaker 1: paper that it has access to. It's not clear to
Speaker 1: me if they're breaking the law or not, but you're
Speaker 1: able to do that. It's it's fine. I use it
Speaker 1: all the fucking time, and it's dope very much is
Speaker 1: part of his legacy. I'm sure the people whoever they
Speaker 1: are who make cy hub would agree with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: A couple of things to note here. One of them
Speaker 1: is that the role that Mit played in this, As
Speaker 1: I noted j Store, there's certainly not an angel here,
Speaker 1: but they seem to about as early as they could
Speaker 1: have said, we have no desire in this being prosecutable.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, well they probably didn't want the heat either, you.
Speaker 1: Know, they didn't want that. Yeah. Sure, again, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying this because the good guys, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but still whatever they didn't do the bad and
Speaker 3: whatever their motive.
Speaker 1: They did, they did not. MIT did again. I think
Speaker 1: most of this is on the probecutors. MIT does some
Speaker 1: of the bad here, right. And Robert Schwartz, Aaron's father,
Speaker 1: is a consultant to the MIT lab. Right, he asks
Speaker 1: MIT to aid in getting the charges dropped or helping
Speaker 1: Aaron secure a plea deal. This is people get angry
Speaker 1: at MIT, especially after Aaron's suicide, and so MIT makes
Speaker 1: a report about this. Robert Schwartz later tells Wired the
Speaker 1: report makes clear that MIT was not neutral, but they
Speaker 1: should not was not neutral, but they should not have
Speaker 1: been neutral. They should have advocated on Aaron's behalf because
Speaker 1: the law under which he was charged was wrong. Laurence Lessig,
Speaker 1: who we talked about earlier, would later say this neutrality,
Speaker 1: which is what MIT claims, is one of those empty
Speaker 1: words that somehow has achieved sacred and conflict text free
Speaker 1: acceptance like transparency. But there are obviously plenty of contexts
Speaker 1: in which to be neutral is simply to be wrong.
Speaker 1: For example, this context, the point the report makes in
Speaker 1: criticizing the prosecutors is that they were at minimum negligent
Speaker 1: and not recognizing that under MIT's open access policies. Aaron's
Speaker 1: access was likely not unauthorized. Mit knew something here that
Speaker 1: a minimum could have cut shorter prosecution, and which it
Speaker 1: turns out, could also have saved someone's life. Neutrality does
Speaker 1: not justify failing to pick up the phone and telling
Speaker 1: the prosecutor hey, in fact, his access was authorized. It
Speaker 1: is also worth noting that the law that Aaron was
Speaker 1: prosecuted under, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was and
Speaker 1: remains an absolutely draconian piece of legislation that gives the
Speaker 1: federal government the freedom to go fucking ape shit on
Speaker 1: people if they feel like a computer was probably used
Speaker 1: to commit a crime. A bill known colloquially as Aaron's
Speaker 1: Law was introduced to amend the CFAA in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: It did not pass into law, but the parameters that
Speaker 1: it was based around continue to be influential in the
Speaker 1: fight to limit the power of the federal government to
Speaker 1: do this kind of shit. And that is where the
Speaker 1: story ends.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's cool. I've I'm really excited to get to
Speaker 3: learn this stuff because I mean, I've actually been He's
Speaker 3: been on my big master list of cool people.
Speaker 2: The cool stuff to.
Speaker 3: Eventually get to, you know, and I'm like, I'm really
Speaker 3: excited to get to learn this because I've always wanted
Speaker 3: to know more. I've always been like I know some
Speaker 3: people who knew him, and like I've always been influenced
Speaker 3: by that era of internet optimism, you know, like a
Speaker 3: lot of the sci fi I was reading, like, I mean,
Speaker 3: I love Corey Doctro for example, you know, and a
Speaker 3: lot of this like hey, we can do this could
Speaker 3: have been beautiful, you know, and like maybe it can
Speaker 3: be beautiful again, and like holding on to that feels
Speaker 3: really important to me. And and Aaron Schwartz is such
Speaker 3: an important part of all of that, unfortunately in that
Speaker 3: way where like, you know, kind of as a martyr
Speaker 3: to it and I didn't know as there's so much
Speaker 3: that I didn't know about it. And it's like also
Speaker 3: the chronic illness thing. I think that it's something that
Speaker 3: people don't talk about enough because people don't know how
Speaker 3: to talk about it. I don't really know how to
Speaker 3: talk about it. But like the way that chronic influence
Speaker 3: pain and stuff like that influences people's decisions and yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, and making people particularly susceptible to uh well,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's the same as when trolls try and
Speaker 3: drive people's suicide really.
Speaker 1: Like, Yeah, same playbook in a lot of ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a much more powerful version of the same playbook at least.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I thought Santa Claus was going to be
Speaker 3: completely different. I thought Santa Claus was Finland. I thought
Speaker 3: Santa but it turns out that was Linus the hacker.
Speaker 2: The hacker, Yeah, try.
Speaker 1: To make Yeah, I get where you were going. Where
Speaker 1: you're going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know Santa Claus younger and did even more
Speaker 3: stuff than just Reindeer.
Speaker 2: So that's right, pretty cool.
Speaker 1: That's what's about.
Speaker 3: Do you have a pluggable for us?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: I do. I actually run a bunch of podcasts. You
Speaker 3: will be listeners. You will be shocked to know that
Speaker 3: one of the guests on this podcast also has a podcast.
Speaker 3: But I have a podcast called Cool People Who Did
Speaker 3: Cool Stuff comes out every Monday and Wednesday, in which
Speaker 3: I talk about cool people who Did Cool Stuff, in
Speaker 3: which I often use academic articles. And I also have
Speaker 3: a podcast on well they're all on Cool Zone Media,
Speaker 3: but the Cool Zone Media Book Club comes out every
Speaker 3: Sunday on both the Cool People Did Cool Stuff Feed
Speaker 3: and It Could Happen Here feed and that's where I
Speaker 3: read fiction to you. And if you want to hear
Speaker 3: me read you a story, then that is a place
Speaker 3: you can go, because, like, I'm not comparing myself to
Speaker 3: Santa Claus or Aaron in this case, but I also
Speaker 3: write fiction and so you can hear my novellas and stuff.
Speaker 2: Robert also writes fiction.
Speaker 1: I Do, I Do. I'll have my second novel out
Speaker 1: soon theoretically. All right, everybody, that's the podcast, Go to Hell.
Speaker 2: I Love You.
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.